described as an internet prodigy and data crusader aaron swartz co-founder of reddit is dead at twenty six years old family friends and the online community are mourning his apparent suicide coming up a look back at his life his appearances on r.t. and the federal charges he blamed for his. we've all heard of the wars in iraq and afghanistan and the covert missions the u.s. is undertaking in yemen pakistan and libya well we're going to take a look at the new a shadow war in mali western forces have been pitted against islamic rebels. and is it possible for a television news network to separate real journalism from reality shows and

entertainment is it bad for business or the new reality will have some answers for you next. it's monday january fourteenth eight pm in washington d.c. i'm christine and you're watching our t.v. well we want to begin today by taking a few moments to honor and remember aaron swartz who was found dead in his new york apartment on friday night apparently from suicide here's a look back at his life. even at age fourteen programmer aaron swartz was described as a computer wizard among his many accomplishments during his short life aaron helped create r.s.s. at age fourteen the tool now universally used to help users subscribe to online information he also formed a company that later merged with read it and he co-founded demand progress

a group of science efforts to restrict internet freedoms and promote social justice issues these were causes near and dear to his heart and many times he appeared on this network to lay out in detail the ways in which was like the patriot act as well as proposed internet laws like sopa and pipa actually violated the constitution r.t. had a chance to speak with aaron over the years and message always resilient and always promoting a free and open internet is fundamental to our constitutional order that the government doesn't get to just spy on you that they need at least independent improvement they need to go to a nonpartisan independent judge and get permission right i mean if it's common sense and it's the sunday shows on the constitutions the government is constrained by having someone else check off to make sure they're not abusing their powers july fourth is a good time to remember what this country was founded that wasn't founded on fear wasn't founded on terror it wasn't founded on the idea that there are some criminals out there so we better take away everyone's rights in front of them the

exact opposite notion that it's better to let a guilty man go free than to put an innocent person in jail that it's better to protect everyone's freedom of speech than their crackdown and make sure nobody is ever offended and you know freedom is messy is the former president said but i think it's important to protect the whole premise of our constitutional rights is that their freedoms that are so important to us that yes we take risks sometimes physical risks to protect them i mean you know we have a whole system of trials and stuff would we be safer if we could just throw people in jail randomness probably a little bit but that's not a crime a country i would want to live about a year and a half of. federal charges a subscription. scientific and literary.

office pursued an exceptionally harsh array of charges carrying potentially or thirty years in prison to punish an alleged crime that had no victims meanwhile unlike j. store mit refused to stand up for aaron and its own communities most cherished principles today we grieve for the extraordinary and irreplaceable man that we have lost services for aaron's words will be held on tuesday outside of chicago he was just twenty six years old. and for more on the life and legacy of aaron swartz i was joined by archie correspondent marie important we

first discussed the recent interview that she had with him i interviewed aaron back in october i was working on a story with respect to cybersecurity and cyberwar my impression of him is that he's very well read he is very principled and he knows everything there is to know about cyber security at least in my opinion he's a tough critic though he took the position where he believed that the u.s. government and us corporations were beginning are beginning to use the internet as an offensive tool in the internet he said is becoming part of this global so called battlefield or viruses are now being spread from country to country he said that the obama administration he believed was beginning to use the internet as a weapon instead of spreading freedom of speech and democracy as you pointed out in your package aaron swartz was a pioneer of a free internet and internet that would not be censored. all people to have

access to all information he was quite kind the interview was about ten to fifteen minutes long but he was very easy to access he was readily available for the interview very well mannered in my brief interview with him and seemed very very determined and loyal to his cause a cause again we can repeat to keeping the internet open and free of any censorship or any government intrusion and as we know that cause got him into some legal trouble we just found out today marina that federal prosecutors prosecutors have actually dropped the case against him this is pretty common when the defendant in a case dies but there is a bigger story here and that is the story of the chief prosecutor in this case carmen ortiz what can you tell us about her and about the way she pursued aaron well i could tell you this the suicide of aaron swartz has prompted a wave of protests and criticism directed at u.s.

attorney carmen ortiz there she was seeking to put aaron in prison for thirty five years armed charges from. him illegally downloading millions of academic articles as you pointed out chris you know swartz was indicted on thirteen counts including wire fraud and computer fraud by sunday evening nearly nine thousand people have already signed an online petition asking president obama to remove ortiz as u.s. attorney now a lot of critics believe that ortiz was going after aaron to make an example out of him and that the punishment that she was seeking did not justify the alleged crime that she was using her position of power to intimidate him to take advantage of his circumstance and she has a history of going after defendants with what some say very very heavy sentences so right now there is

a lot of blowback headed her. way thousands of people on line criticizing the way that she dealt with aaron swartz as keats and dealt with him. as a human being a we should also mention that according to the wall street journal swartz's attorney was attempting to negotiate a plea deal as recently as last wednesday but ortiz's office reports would not budge very much because of something else i read about carmen ortiz is that from what i understand she was named massachusetts person of the year a couple of years ago in two thousand and eleven somebody considered perhaps a choice for future governors or certainly somebody that the spotlight was shining on perhaps for a different reason now you know that erin's death and all that it has brought about has come to light i want to talk to you about another aspect of this case and that is massachusetts institute of technology mit announced it has launched an internal

probe into the events leading up to aaron swartz his death just go into a little bit of detail about sort of the mit aspect of this story well aaron wasn't a student at mit but it was it was mit that was the prime reason that led to the federal trial against him we should mention on sunday the president of massachusetts institute of technology did write a letter expressing his condolences and referred to aaron swartz as a gifted brilliant creative young man and mired by many now on the way the institution played a main role in his lawsuit is because according to prosecutors and according to the document again swartz in two thousand and eleven he was arrested and charged with sneaking into mit's network closet and using the school's connection to download millions of academic and research files from g. store without paying for them and that's how mit is involved store

according to reports didn't want to press any charges. mit did not come out publicly to defend swartz in any case or to prevent this prosecution from going forward in the aftermath of his suicide and his friends and families saying that this prosecution in this case contributed to his suicide mit is now launching an internal investigation to see if the school in any way contributed to the feds that have unfolded in past days and for those of us marina shocked and saddened by aaron swartz his death really interesting sort of watching everything unfold on twitter i mean from the new york times to the new yorker wired to all of the you know web savvy publications remembering honoring aaron i thought this was interesting too the u.s. senator ron wyden of oregon tweeted this over the weekend he said deeply saddened by the loss of aaron swartz i was privileged to work with him on people his advocacy for the greater good will be missed i mean really briefly marina just talk

about the influence words had on policy especially proposed laws on the internet freedoms he had to influence not just on internet freedoms and policy i mean this this young man was considered a you know a prodigy a computer prodigy he but first and foremost in the last few years of his life that was his alternate focus to keep the internet free and open and accessible to all users to to prevent any government intrusion censorship or surveillance but we should mention in case are viewers know that aaron swartz at the age of thirteen filters first web site at the age of fourteen he was the coo creator of the r.s.s. feed he developed several popular websites such as reddit helped create creative commons dot com and he also lastly founded demand progress an internet group that campaigns against web censorship people ultimately known as

a. robin hood as one that always wanted to stand up for internet freedom certainly body that was going on line a life that was much too short but a legacy that will live on for quite some time artie correspondent marina porte nice talking to us about aaron swartz thanks so much. parents funeral will be held tomorrow at eleven am eastern ten ten am central at central avenue synagogue in highland park illinois our t. has reporters on the ground in chicago to bring you reactions and reflections from his life and legacy you can find those that are t. dot com and r.t. dot com slash usa. well for quite some time now we had our t.v. have been covering the issue of drones both from the international and domestic perspective in particular we've been watching local police departments consider and adopt the use of surveillance drones now the big apple is thinking about buying here is a picture of your police commissioner ray kelly during

a rare public interview late last week during that conversation kelly said the new york police department is looking into the use of drones for surveillance purposes kelly said he wouldn't rule out any potential tool that could healthy n.y.p.d. do its job better he said that drones could help the police size up protests and demonstrations in particular but how much more help does the n.y.p.d. really need it already has three thousand close circuit cameras to act as extra eyes plus of course the thirty four thousand five hundred officers in uniform which amounts to approximately sixty nine thousand eyes and drones do have the advantage of flying in the sky and providing an aero aerial view of course so how the n.y.p.d. would handle the privacy issues that go hand in hand with drone surveillance that is still an open question however the new york police department has recently come under fire for its huge spying apparatus which has focused on surveilling muslim americans in the tri state area so just what will new york city look like with its

drones dotting the famous sky line well if we see something we'll say something. i want to turn now to a developing story out of africa a shadow war once again pitting western troops against islamic radicals it's all happening in the northern city of kona in mali a landlocked country in the western part of africa now last week insurgents took control of the region and soon after french forces got involved it was apparently not enough rebel forces are making advances despite those french airstrikes that the military in a from france adopted prompt. action there prompted an islamist leader to say that france had quote opened the gates of hell for all its citizens today the associated press reported that the u.s. has offered drones to help in the fight earlier today i brought in an e. a quick founder of the democracy and conflict research institute to help us understand

a little more about this region and also the conflict unfolding there. you know the molly has actually been at war scenes general area of last year and this is when people marlins who had been living in libya and fighting for kind i'll get our feet to there are hundreds of them and went all the way to mali now mali doesn't share a border with libya so if they had to go through need and all jiri and the guard and they started fighting the government as a continuation of an ethnic basis that has actually lasted for over fifty years and the government. who do us i've been training for about four or five years and some of us have written raising questions about the collapse there is suddenly and their fight is to go over the northern sixty percent of mali but they also had allies they were fighting for independence their allies were islamists who wanted to

impose sharia law the site took over most of the country and they were implementing harsh rule cutting of. stormie. couples who've children out of wedlock a very harsh condition and so the africans the mali and so in the rest of the africans took the keys to the united nations seeking help to take back their country one other quick piece that is very important that i forgot in march the one of the soldiers that the u.s. are trained actually overthrew the democratic government so in mali you have a confluence of actually four crisis wow so much going on there and i think it's important to note too that mali gained its independence from france back in one nine hundred sixty and then had its first democratic elections in one thousand nine hundred two because a little bit about you know just what happened what's happening now does that undo sort of that kind of progress that was made oh yes i absolutely destroyed it completely because in fact the kool-aid by the u.s.

trained soldier called cutting our model sanogo who do you. in over ten years he's been to the united states like six seven times so extensive trainee there was a month to go for the president to end his term former president i might have to money to rehear overthrew him forced him into exile and govern and the west african force cuts in son will go out so he was actually trained by the us government and overthrew their more graphic. hard for long one democratic government so it pained many of us and that's one of the many criticisms that many of us have about u.s. policy towards mali but even seems that a kid in my view the africans have been the u.n. because the one thing they wanted to avoid they wanted to help mali take back this country establish order but he said they did no want to do it like george bush did which is invade iraq outside of international law so they've been spending months in the u.n. security council begging for support beggin for legal authorization begging for

funding and it's been very slow and i frankly have been critical of the u.s. rule in the security council just a couple of days ago i came across a piece of news where the main u.s. soldier the chief chairman of the joint chiefs was here well mali we don't think it is serious enough it's hugely serious you can destabilize all of west africa so as bad as the french intervention looks if you look into mali now most people support it most of the west african support it because this mom is had taken over about sixty percent of the country we back in the summer and just last week they started moving south they are now about three hundred miles or about four hundred kilometers away from the capital now france did it for its own interests but he happens to be is helping the africans the west african foot soldiers will get into

the country now from. it's about five hundred troops and he's using the strikes and we should say to you i mean that in light of sort of what happened over the weekend we've heard from you the united kingdom germany and even the united states they have pledged their support now so talk about how that support my affect things moving forward here because. i had wanted it to happen earlier the u.n. blessing of support india africa has to do called of the country to bring some order and democracy it took a long time in the security council but finally in december twenty first a result luzhin unanimously twenty five but you have to make good plans to flu intervene of course some people are raising questions as to where the world francis fits in with the with the result lucian the problem is that it would have to queue

months to properly train the africans however that islam is moved very quickly and he. gives short of the carpets or so fronts in my view hard to move quickly and all the other media appears at least the western media players because. the view from moscow and the view from beijing of the members in the security goes with the feel about it but as you said correctly the europeans germany britain the you know it is to the r.c. ok well support different i want to take this sort of out of just mali i know that there are several examples of this going on especially around africa and i just over the weekend we saw a failed mission in somalia and this is when a french team was actually trying to rescue one of its kind of secret agents i think a man by the name of denis allaire alex a secret agent believed to be held since two thousand and nine by al shabaab apparently though insurgents killed the hostage during this raid despite help from u.s. combat aircraft as well so talk

a little bit about the bigger issue this is not concentrated in. region it is not it is not actually you know there are three very big dangerous pockets of. in segin see islam. militant he said yes he is in somalia in northern nigeria. and then of course mali and this stretch across the width of africa and there are fears that if be linked together it will cause even more problems now i julie even though mali is we're on the west and so mali as we on base the two are linked because in fact what we are here is that our president our london pirates once you decided they were going to intervene in mali what we are putting together what we are speculating he then decided ok we have some information rescue our hostage. in somalia and it went wrong and you are right president obama just sent a letter to the congress because u.s.

law says that if we mix in the military removed and goes into a foreign country with a military he has to perform congress so we know that he held the french in somalia business in the letter he sent to congress after the event our they even so much really to talk about sadly we're out of time thank you so much for coming in a quite a the founder of the democracy and conflict research institute i think so much my pleasure thanks for having me. so i have here on our team at mixing business with pleasure and beastie is combining real journalism with entertainment programs like thirty rock and sixteen hundred pounds and what is a boost in the ratings for instant credibility for some answers next. the worst thing only white house or the radio for a minute. what you. just you've never seen anything like that i'm cold.

all right so when you turn on the new as you expect to see commercials right after every couple segments you get a few commercials and right before the show comes back the network has some promotions for its other offerings but savvy viewers are noticing that in many cases mainstream channels more and more are merging the two together using news as an opportunity to promote entertainment shows and even vice versa the los angeles times says quote the idea of media companies making use of their platforms to advertise their own assets and personalities is nothing new a.b.c.'s good morning america has no qualms about using its valuable time to talk about dancing with the stars but n.b.c. is becoming the most aggressive in doing this and if it can continues it could harm the credibility of its news division now here's an example of what n.b.c. executives are calling project symphony. just before us tonight was the premiere of sixteen hundred penn a comedic portrayal of the life of the first family in the white house josh gad

plays the son in the series which he helped to create tonight we've asked him to sit down with our colleague jenna bush hager who played an actual member of the first family during the presidency of her father well tonight they compare notes on the fictional white house versus the actual one all right so is this merging of news and entertainment just smart business or quote it degrade the news earlier today i was joined by danny schechter a journalist and filmmaker he was in our new york studios and discuss this matter further and what he thinks is sort of behind this trend. jenna bush lead someone in the white house she lived in the white house and father was the president you know the distinction between fiction and faction between reality and you know attempts to emulate reality are continuing so to such a degree that you can't tell what's real and what isn't real and of course hoping

to profit from all of this and benefit from all of this are the entertainment companies who will never miss a promotional opportunity they spend more money on promos than programs they're into trying to market their brand in every possible way that they can and the facts in a way be damned news credibility doesn't mean anything to them news ratings mean something to them and rakes in the dollars danny right let's put up another example here. well a program is change the way your program change when you finish your program you and two or three other programs to do press pass after the tonight show tonight show website jay's garage i mean there's just so much more media now that you do then you have to tweet out the new instagram stuff then you send out pictures so i mean there's the show doesn't just end it the more you do almost another show for another hour or so after you finish your regular show ok so this is n.b.c.'s jay

leno on you know the meet the press segment on n.b.c. called press pass talking about this but danny had to ask i mean shouldn't viewers and consumers also be held responsible i mean they are after all the ones watching yes they are but you know it's a question of what else is there to watch people who are maybe a little more knowledgeable might watch your heart but many americans are watching networks thinking that the news they present is the news is all the news and of course it isn't and we have this kind of border line narrowing line between the personalities and the and the issues and unfortunately it's hard sometimes to make a distinction you see this in hollywood as well with the movie about the bin laden you know escapade you know of the seal tick seal team six where various facts were invented although they appear to be real the same thing with argo which won the

golden globes last night there's this whole lack of respect for truth and more and more. an emphasis on what we call proof plus you know an attempt to turn the proof turning what's true rather into entertainment products it is tough because that when you know when you look at successful role models or business models online which frankly most media companies are doing these days they see models like the huffington post like buzz feed places where cute puppy photos get tens of thousands of hits and then. often drop people to click on the news stories or stories about divorce so on one hand it is a model that seems to be working so from the business standpoint you can sort of see why the television media companies are doing it but danny talk about the impact of the effect that this is having on us as i don't think it is working they're actually losing viewers some losing audience they prove your lies news and

information and they don't inform the american people very well about what's really happening so jay leno himself used to do this bit on his show where he went out into the into the public and he held up two pictures here's president carter here's mr peanut who do you recognize some people recognize mr peanut president carter this is a deliberate effort to dumb down the american people the news networks are part of it and they have been for years what do you think that i mean can we expect these profit driven outlets to attend quality news coverage in the future or does journalistic integrity rank below ratings and making money well what's happening is that the viewers are actually leaving the network environment they're going online they're going to twitter they're going to other news outlets looking for information from you know news outlets from around the world like our t.v. and.